One Shot at Glory

By PJ Davitt

Dave must confront the dark side to the beautiful game. The one the rest of us never see.
The professional contract and big time beckoned for Wolston's teen hotshot. Until it happened.
A serious ankle injury turns the striker's world upside down. Now he must convince Rovers' tough academy chief, Rob Duncan, he deserves a scholarship and that once-in-a-lifetime chance to pull on the shirt of the team he’s adored for as long as he’s loved soccer.
Dave has 90 minutes to prove he can be part of Wolston’s future in the biggest match of his life. But above all he needs to convince himself he still has what it takes to survive in a cut-throat world where only the very best ever get a shot at stardom.

• Language: English
• Publisher: PJ Davitt
• Release date: Nov 25, 2015
• ISBN: 9781311352507

PJ Davitt

Paddy Davitt is an award-winning chief football correspondent with extensive knowledge of the game built up from working closely with managers, players and owners in the English Premier League and the Championship. He has also covered professional football in the USA, Italy, Austria and France.His childhood passion for writing was sparked by reading the fictional football stories of authors such as Brian Glanville and Michael Hardcastle.Paddy grew up in the Midlands, England, and is a lifelong Coventry City fan. He works as a Group Football Editor for the regional publishing group Archant, where he covers Norwich City FC.‘One Shot at Glory’ is the first in a series of novels featuring a young footballer’s quest to follow his boyhood dream and make it big at his hometown club.Paddy is currently working on the second book in the series.

Book preview

One Shot at Glory (Dave Shaw: A soccer prodigy)

Copyright Paddy Davitt 2014

Smashwords Edition

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the publisher.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, organisations and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously.

Paddy is currently working on part two in the Dave Shaw series

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

About the Author

Chapter One

Crippling pain shoots through my right ankle. Pain like I have never experienced before in my life. Rising fear replaces the adrenaline surging around my body. One second focusing on scoring a goal, the next trying to avoid looking down at my shattered ankle and the anxious faces of Wolston’s medical staff and team mates crowding around me.

I know what the boys are thinking.

Counting their blessings it’s me and not them lying there on the turf.

Dad kisses my forehead in the ambulance as paramedics fit the oxygen mask. Mum cries by my hospital bedside a few hours later after I come round from surgery.

Doctors can repair shattered bones and ligaments, but what about the numbness of missing the thing you love? The thing you’ve done everyday for the previous eleven years of your life.

Playing with a sponge ball in the living room, weaving in and out of cushions, turning the sofa into AC Milan’s famous defence for one night, playing with mates in the park, school teams in cup finals, Wolston Rovers in that famous sky blue kit.

Life becomes one endless battle to rebuild my shattered right leg. Weeks on crutches, rehab sessions with club physios and specialists.

Mum and Dad learning the art of walking on eggshells around a timebomb in their midst. Offers of help met with anger and resentment.

It was monotonous. I hated my world and everything in it, from the physical torture to those dark thoughts and black moods. The self-doubt and the sick sensation my dream was over.

Now here I am. 12 months later having to play the game of my life. Eight years in Wolston’s academy and it all comes down to the next 90 minutes.

Not that it should have, you understand. No way. I’d been cruising towards that scholarship contract and a giant step towards the big time ever since Rovers first spotted me.

Mighty Rovers. My club, Dad’s club. The team I first fell in love with when he took me to watch them play Liverpool as a five-year-old. If I close my eyes I’m back there again. Holding his hand tightly as we weave between the crowds, squeeze through the turnstile to climb those steep steps that seemed to go on forever towards the back of the West Stand.

And there it is. That first sight of the lush football pitch bathed in brilliant sunshine. The most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. It still is, even now at 16. Wolston’s home is like a drug to me and I’m hooked.

‘David, for the last time will you get in the car.’

‘Don’t panic, Dad, we’ve got plenty of time. Bopper told us to report to The Lodge for one.’

I slam the passenger door shut and pull the headphones over my ears. I’m in no mood for Dad’s pre-match pep talk today.

What does Bop always say?

Get yourself mentally right, visualise your runs into channels, springing their offside trap, outwitting their keeper. Now repeat the mantra. Focus. Focus.

Bopper French. Wolston’s Under-16s coach. The man guiding Rovers to the brink of an academy league title. The same man who carried me off the pitch last March screaming in agony.

Bop is more than a football coach. He’s a mentor.

‘Look Shawsy, I believe in you,’ I remember him saying after one more average display during my comeback from injury. ‘The other coaches believe in you, your team mates still believe in you.’

‘My confidence’s shot to bits, Bop.’

‘You’re the most natural goalscorer we’ve got here in the academy. You don’t lose that, injury or no injury. You have to give your body time to adjust, get minutes under your belt. Find your match sharpness.’

Five games without a goal. I’d never fired so many blanks in a row. My brain was sharp as ever, I knew what I had to do and where I needed to be on a pitch, but the signals just weren’t getting through to the rest of my body or my wrecked right ankle.

I’ve never been a streaky striker. I didn’t run hot and cold before my world was turned upside down.

The tears and the tantrums start again, rows with my old man over the littlest things, constant atmospheres at home as my dream slipped away.

I know the numbers. All the lads know the numbers. Wolston recruit eight or nine first year scholars each summer. By my age, clubs were on the look out for players from all over, and I mean home and abroad, so what chance a striker with a dodgy ankle who had lost a yard of pace and couldn’t score goals anymore?

You know as well as I do.

With each miss the pressure grew. Lads who had been in my shadow were starting to blossom, edging me out of the spotlight.

Now I was getting substituted in matches, having to sit on the bench alongside players who previously looked up to me.

Dave Shaw. Predator, goal machine, the young hotshot with an academy contract tucked in his back pocket destined for the very top.

Except I’m hurtling in the opposite direction, lying awake at night after each misfiring match replaying conversations with Bop and his staff. Searching for clues like some amateur detective, picking through the meaning of every sentence, studying the body language of the coaches; worrying about the growing presence of Rob Duncan.

Wolston’s academy chief is a cross between that teacher you hate most and the school bully you steer clear of.

Lads go out of their way to avoid his office window at The Lodge when we wait for lifts home after training.

On Saturday mornings he stares out of that same window down at the pitches below. Wolston’s training ground is his manor and he knows everyone and everything. Step out of line and he’d be the first to hear about it. Late for training, late for meeting the minibus to an away match, arguing with referees, nothing escapes his attention.

Duncan compiles dossiers on all the academy players. If you fall foul of the surly Scot your binder is open on the desk as you enter his room; the head teacher pouring over his crime sheet, only occasionally looking up to jab an accusing finger.

The older you get, the more you wise up. The information in those leather folders contains the keys to the door or having it slammed shut in your face; just who has a real chance out of the 100 or so boys progressing through Wolston’s academy at any one time, the one or two touched by stardust hurtling towards the top, the possibles, the ones yet to convince or those just making up the numbers.

It was black or white by my age. Stay or go. Cashing in the lottery ticket, earning a two-year scholarship with every advantage going to clear that one final hurdle; the barrier to a privileged world of money, status, hero worship. Or cast into a world of exit trials with others scrambling for a second chance, maybe settling for part-time football and giving up on the dream of being a professional.

Earn the golden academy invite and it was training and playing just like a professional for two more years. There were still no guarantees at 18 you wouldn’t be tossed aside, but the odds were in your favour then to at least make a decent living lower down the leagues.

Duncan is driving this gravy train. His brief is to produce first team talent for Wolston Rovers. He had a proven track record. His verdict was final.

Rain lashes across the windscreen as we turn off the main road into The Lodge. My mind drifts back to Ipswich and the game I broke my ankle that was played in similar conditions.

No one could be that unlucky? Not today of all days.

Positive thoughts Dave. This is your time. You’re a big game player.

Wolston need a win to clinch the academy league title. The club’s first at this level in five years. That was the team of Hamer, Pounchett and Hassall, now first team regulars.

Arsenal stands in our way. One of the best youth set-ups in the country. We were just little rural cousins stuck out in the sticks.

The past few nights I dreamt about repeating my hat-trick against the Gunners in a 5-2 victory last season. That seemed a lifetime ago, when the sky was the limit until a shattered ankle brought me crashing down to earth.

C’mon Dave. Time to live in the present here, not the past.

I’d stumbled on that mantra in a self-help book Dad bought me, when the depression really kicked in. I told him it would come in handy to prop up that wonky snooker table in our extension, but I’d read it cover to cover.

‘Shape Your Own Destiny’ by some expert in psychology. Typical Dad. He’d grown up in an era when the only scientific thing players did was pop pills to help with hangovers.

Dad had watched every game since I’d first turned out for Rovers eight years ago. The embarrassing picture of his son wearing a sky blue top three sizes too big for him took pride of place in our hallway.

It’s always a boost to see him standing there on the touchline but after a shocker I knew it was coming; the post-mortem. Sometimes I’d sit in silence, let his words sink in. He talks plenty of sense and knows my game better than anyone. Other days I’d be spoiling for a fight and the car would turn into a war zone, like two rival managers trading insults in a press conference.

Then silence for the rest of the evening, Mum the mediator, before the Sunday morning thaw.

‘How are you feeling son?’

We park in our usual spot. The car park was barely half full on Saturdays with no office staff or senior players about. But we were still in the furthest bay from the changing rooms. It was a superstition of mine. Lesson one about Dave Shaw. I’m superstitious. Big time.

‘A bit nervous, Dad. Just want to get out there.’

‘That’s good. If you didn’t have butterflies there’d be something wrong.’

‘Dad, what if…’

I hold his gaze for a second and look away. I couldn’t quite finish the sentence, but I guess he could see the anxiety on my face.

‘David, just do your best. That’ll be good enough. Trust me. I know how hard you’ve worked, the long hours to get fit, the worries about your form and sharpness. Just put those negative thoughts out of your head. I’m proud of you. Whatever happens today, remember that.’

This was big for my old man. He didn’t normally do the whole emotional, touchy feely stuff.

I feel an urge to respond but the rain hammering against our car roof is the soundtrack to this tender moment.

‘C’mon Shawsy, they’ll have kicked off at this rate.’

Bop taps on the car window. Dad gives me a smile, then a nod of re-assurance. I bolt from the car, kit bag over my head as the rain buckets down.

Strains of drum and bass grow louder as I stride through the dressing room door. I don’t need any pumping up today. I sit down at my usual peg in the far corner and look across at players I’d grown up with over the last few years. It’s like peering in the mirror. Tense faces, no banter, no eye contact, just the thud of the music reverberating around the walls. They were all in the same boat as me. This was more than a game, more than a championship at stake.

Bop strides in and looks around. No need for a rousing team talk. We have plenty of motivation for this one.

The rain eases as we jog out onto the pitch